A number of security companies send us their company press releases, which we republish in the press section of Help Net Security. This is an overview of interesting developments in the corporate security world during the past week.

21 May 2002 - Sophos has announced that TA Associates, one of the leading private equity and buyout firms in the United States, has completed a minority investment of L41 million (US$60 million) in the company. Two TA Associates senior executives have been appointed, one to the Sophos Plc board in the UK and the other to the board of Sophos Americas - which will also help drive the company's continued activities in the US market.

Dr. Peter Lammer, co-founder and joint CEO of Sophos said: "We decided to partner with TA because of its deep software investment experience, extensive network of contacts and expertise in helping companies grow their business in the vital US market. TA's investment should enable us to capitalise further on the worldwide growth in demand for anti-virus protection by helping us gain market share in the largest market in the world."

21 May 2002 - Secure Computing Corporation announced that it has acquired the intellectual property and customer base of FiPass, an authentication management and identity verification service, from FiPoint, Inc.

21 May 2002 - Trend Micro, Inc. launched its Enterprise Protection Strategy which manages the explosive costs of virus outbreaks, helps to quarantine viruses and prevent them from spreading, and improves the visibility of an attack and minimizes its impact on network operations. Trend Micro's Enterprise Protection Strategy will provide businesses with a flexible architecture of services, products, centralized management, and faster access to TrendLabs for proactive outbreak management.

Steve Chang, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO, Trend Micro said: "Our Enterprise Protection Strategy sets a new industry standard for antivirus outbreak lifecycle management today and into the future."

23 May 2002 - GFI's Email Security Testing Zone, has launched three new email tests. The new tests enable administrators to find out free of charge if their network is protected against emails using the Iframe Remote and Object Codebase exploits, and to check whether their anti-virus software is working properly

Sandro Gauci, security engineer at GFI said: "GFI's Email Security Testing Zone aims to help administrators keep abreast of the latest email threats and ensure that their networks are protected against them."

Spotlight

35 percent of employees would sell information on company patents, financial records and customer credit card details if the price was right. This illustrates the growing importance for organizations to deploy data loss prevention strategies.

Sun Tzu's writings have been studied throughout the ages by professional militaries and can used to not only answer the question of whether or not we are in a cyberwar, but how one can fight a cyber-battle.

Infosec consultant Paul Moore came up with a working solution to thwart a type of behavioral profiling. The result is a Chrome extension called Keyboard Privacy, which prevents profiling of users by the way they type by randomizing the rate at which characters reach the DOM.

There is still way too much apathy when it comes to data-centric security. Given the sensitive data the OPM was tasked with protecting, it should have had state-of-the-art data protection, but instead it has become the poster child for IT security neglect.